The Perfect Ending
by charrrmed
Summary: Left to choose for herself for the first time in a long time, Elena struggles as a transitioning vampire.


**Summary: Left to choose for herself for the first time in a long time, Elena struggles as a transitioning vampire.**

**A/N: I know I have a lot of other stories to update, but I wanted to post this. It's my first time writing in Elena's point of view, so please let me know how I did.**

Elena didn't know what switching off one's feelings felt like or how one went about doing it (Stefan had told her that it's something one just knows how to do), but that's all she thought about as Klaus sank his fangs into her and drank to his heart's content.

She stood immobile in his clutches. The orange glow of the flames provided a beautiful frame as her life flashed before her eyes. She couldn't hear anything, not even his noisy swallowing. So often in the past year and a half since she met Stefan, she had felt like her life was spiraling beyond her control with only brief moments of security. As her life's essence was drained out of her in order to sustain someone else, she thought she might have clung to those brief moments too forcefully, so forcefully she had sometimes thought her life was balanced.

She felt like crying. She could feel her throat closing up, but she would not allow herself the reprieve. She was practicing shutting off her feelings as of this moment.

It was harder for her to breathe now and her chest tightened with her need to cry for all that she was losing. Her eyes traveled to Stefan. Her vision blurred, but she was seeing a clear picture. The memory of running away from him, scared and confused, played over and over in his eyes, in her mind.

The pain, heartbreak, and sadness were naked on his face as he cried for her. He hurt for her. He looked absolutely destroyed. Did he wonder what she was thinking, why her face mirrored none of what his showed? Her last thought before everything went black was of his constant reassurance that he wouldn't let anything happen to her. And like that, she felt like smiling. Not with fondness but with resentment. The most honest person in the last weeks of her life had been Katherine.

_Even you must realize she's doomed._

She had been ugly about it, but she had been honest.

She wanted to turn around and look at Klaus, at the man, the monster, the climax of her human life. She wanted to look at where all of her decisions had led her, all of her tears, her laughs, her anger, her lies, her fights with her friends and with her brother. It all led her here, sacrificed at an altar, her blood spilled over a rock. Used.

She died before she could see the cavalry arrive. After all of the planning and the decisions made behind her back to keep her safe, they didn't even make it in time to watch all of it fail as she fell lifelessly over the slab of rock while Klaus stood above her.

She left Mystic Falls very soon after the sacrifice.

The first person she saw when she opened her eyes was Damon. He hovered above her, a mix of concern and wariness tightening his features. Someone called her name. It was Jeremy. It was John. They crowded around her as she slowly sat up. Damon said they needed to give her room. Neither listened.

"Elena look at me. Look at me," John said breathlessly. "Are you okay?"

She didn't think she had ever seen him so scared. He framed her face and Jeremy squeezed her hand. She looked at him. "I'm dead."

He closed his eyes as if to protect himself from what she just said. Only later would she wonder how brutal that had been for him to hear. He squeezed her hand even harder, and she barely registered the pain. "Jenna?" she asked softly. He let out a shaky breath.

Her eyes moved to Damon who stood in the background. He looked so regretful. Why? She stood.

"Take it easy," John counseled.

"Where's Stefan?"

Damon told her not to worry about it at first, but he answered at her insistence. Klaus took him along with Elijah. She didn't really feel anything. "Where's Bonnie?" She was moving away from John and Jeremy, not quite toward Damon but toward the door.

Jeremy swallowed before answering. "She's in bad shape. She used all her powers on Klaus. We can't wake her up."

She felt a little something at this but it wasn't like usual. It wasn't as she expected.

"Elena, we can help you through this. Jeremy and I," John clarified with a look of pure hatred thrown at Damon.

"I don't wanna be helped," she said quietly. She was tired of being helped. She looked at Jeremy. "I love you." She said it with more emotion than she now felt and she sped out. She heard him scream no. She heard John call her name. And Damon caught her.

"Elena please."

"Not now, Damon," she bit off as she kept walking. She was forced to stop when he grabbed her arm.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just-"

"Wanted to save me," she finished for him. "You just...weren't thinking." Something was nagging at her as she stared up at him. "Anything else? Have I got it all? Why are you sorry, Damon? Didn't you _want _me alive at all costs?"

"I made a mistake," he ground out. "I tried to _fix_ it, but Bonnie, she...she wanted to save her strength. She didn't want to risk it."

He looked like this was eating him alive.

"I said no." And that's when it clicked. The nagging memory. What was once forced into her subconscious. It rushed at her and she tore her arm from his hand. It was as if the movement turned the switch back on because her emotions flooded her. "I said no," she said, shocked. Her voice almost didn't register in her ears. Tears welled in her eyes as her heart broke. "You compelled me?" She stumbled back from him, feeling betrayed and something else she hadn't expected: she felt incredibly foolish. "You compelled me." She remembered.

The dawning realization on his face further broke her heart. Used. He had used her and then compelled her. All of this time, she had been his secret. She slowly crumbled to the ground as her tears spilled. She had said no then, too. It had not mattered then, either. Worse, she had not even been given the choice to panic as had happened when he had been damning her to this life.

"I'm so sorry. Elena, I'm..._so _sorry."

He certainly looked it. He crouched and touched her. "I can help you with this-"

"STOP!" She violently slapped his hands away. "_Don't _touch me." Her body shook and her heart raced as she glared at him. He stumbled back and all of his strength seemed to slip away. She stood and said, "_Don't _follow me. _Please._" Her voice shook on the last word.

She ran.

She determined to stay away from people. She didn't want to kill anyone, although she wrestled with whether she was going to live or die. This was not how she had wanted her death to come about; this was not what she had planned.

She couldn't leave Jeremy. She was all he had now.

But John was surely staying with him now that Jenna was gone and she had left town. He would take care of Jeremy if she died.

In the dark parking lot of a fast food restaurant, she squirmed against a busted light post. She had literally torn some of her hair out; her feelings were bombarding her, and her brain couldn't keep up. She wanted to think about Jeremy, and Jenna, and Bonnie, and Caroline, Damon and Stefan, her life as it had been, her life as it could be, her friends and remaining family in a world without her. But her emotions attacked her too viscously and much too quickly for her to seriously think about anything. Regret, abject fear, anger, resentment, guilt at feeling angry and resentful, all of it tore at her until she was crying and moaning for it to stop.

She didn't want this. She wasn't supposed to be going through this.

They were supposed to save her.

She was supposed to die, the real thing.

"God, ahhhhhh!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, crying uncontrollably and wishing the sun would suddenly come up and put her out of her misery.

"Oh shit."

She turned abruptly at the voice and her gums started burning. Covering her mouth, she scrambled back even as her eyes tightened and her veins showed. "Get away from me," she said desperately in a muffled voice.

"Holy shit, you're tripped out as fuck."

Four of them. Two girls and two guys. The flow of their blood assaulted her ears. She shook her head vigorously. They were older than her, looked like they were in college.

"Yo, I think we should leave her alone," one of the girls said cautiously.

The girl was taller, but Elena was positive she could take her.

"No, we should call the police. What if she ends up dying or something?"

The other girl. Shorter than her. About the same height as...Bonnie.

"Can you even-" was the last thing she heard before she sped away. She heard their surprise at the impossible, so she kept running, kept running until she couldn't hear them anymore, kept running until she was far enough that she could not track them back and kill them.

She was starving. The good thing is that the hunger had quieted her emotions. The bad thing is that she most certainly should not turn her switch off now because she knows she'll kill someone.

The sun was coming up. The sky was getting lighter and lighter. She was wishing two things: that someone would come along and stake her and that someone would come along and force her to complete the transition. She wanted the choice taken from her. She smiled at the irony. Of all the times for her to be able to make her own decision.

She sat on a bench in a park, her legs drawn up to her chest, and watched the sky.

It would be good if she died. It would make a perfect sort of sense. She had tried to handle everything thrown at her and she supposed she had succeeded. But she still had a way out. Damon's blood in her system didn't change that. She can still die, the perfect ending to what became more and more a tragic story.

She hoped Jeremy was alright, that he was weathering losing her (and he might be losing her in more ways than one). She hoped Bonnie would wake up. She wasn't supposed to use all of her powers; she was supposed to let Elijah help, but Elena knew without a doubt why she hadn't. If she wasn't going to save her from becoming a vampire, then she was going to do everything she could to take Klaus out. _She. _No one else.

The thought provided Elena with true comfort she hadn't felt in a while.

Her thoughts turned to Damon and his betrayal. A shudder went through her and she lay her head on her knees. She felt incredibly sad, alone, and lost at that moment. She had believed in him so much.

She had forgiven so much because she had _invested_ so much.

Turning her back on him had not been an option. Because of her love for Stefan, she had put her faith in Damon, that he could change, that he would change, he just needed a friend. Someone who wouldn't judge him so harshly or dismiss him too quickly.

She had invested so much because she had _forgiven_ so much.

She would never let someone in her friends' lives who would hurt them. She would never let someone in her life who would hurt her. So Damon was _going_ to change. She hadn't made a mistake, could never make one that big. She, he, just needed some time and then it would all be worth it. Caroline's abuse, Jeremy's death, Bonnie's distrust and hatred, the way her own heart would sometimes quicken when he would come near, it would all be worth it because she couldn't be that wrong.

Stefan would never let someone in her life who could hurt her.

_As long as you have a Salvatore on each arm, you're doomed._

Isobel's words resounded in her ears as if the deceased woman stood next to her. She smiled through her tears. In the end, it had been her family, a line she had despised, two women she had looked down on, who had been the most honest with her.


End file.
